Pass or Fail instead of "traditional" grades?

I like the idea. I've taken some pass or fail courses in my time, and although there is always a certain percentage of the class which I feel is just trying to "get by" I think this happens in part because of their addiction to grades.

Our elementary school program at our school has no traditional letter grades. In essence the students are given "needs improvement" "meets expectations" and "exceeds expectations" which is similar to a pass/fail system.

We have only a pass/fail system at Eagle Rock School. So, I am a believer in it. I do think however the the hypothesis that students will be more motivated in such a system is overstated.

In my experience there are just as many motivation issues and there are lots of ability issues (i.e., a student may be motivated but lack the skills to manage their time). Early on in my career as a believer in the p/f approach I over-relied on it to put the onus on the student and I took a bit of the onus off of me to still address the many motivation and ability issues.

I am still a fan...I think it puts the goals for understanding (or however you frame your learning goals) front and center. It creates the opportunity to focus on learning conversations. But, it could encourage the kind of amateur mistakes I made when I once treated it as a panacea.

Pretty much everything is like that right? Nothing by itself is a complete solution.

Thanks for sharing. I'd love to hear more about how assessment works at your school. Would you like to share in more detail how you've implemented your pass/fail system?

That's an interesting idea Carol, and I think it would lead to some other consequences as well.

For example, the notion that each child should take the same amount of time to cover the content of a course is a bit ridiculous. Perhaps instead of differentiating instruction of the same material as much as we do, we should be providing personalized pathways through course content, and allow students to progress at different rates. Your "not yet" makes complete sense in this context, as then students would recognize that they merely need to spend more time and effort in order to succeed in a particular area, rather than thinking the story is over because they "failed."

I think pass/fail is useful in limited applications, but not a realistic means to provide information to students and parents all the time. I've used it for some projects--particularly when something is brand-new and challenging, and when the opportunity to continue work to reach 'pass' is provided.

David mentions a multi-tiered system that seems to me to be a variation on a standards-based assessment. I believe kids (and adults) usuall need and like to know the level of their performance if it is provided in a clear, measured, and objective manner, and 'meets' or 'exceeds' provide some differentation. If those categories are broken out by standards or performance indicators, they provide a measure of proficiency that is clear to all. And they give the student the opportunity to decide whether 'meets' is good enough, and whether 'exceeds' is a preferred achievement level. I don't think pass/not-pass is emotionally adequate, does not match real life and ignores the realities of schools and adult life.

Antioch University has not given grades since it began matriculating students in the 1850's! Many Alternative schools from the 60's started with the intention of not using grades for evaluation, nor for grouping students. There is great evidence from these schools that giving students narrative assessments, and including them in the process of evaluation of their work is a powerful way to both inspire more ownership of learning, and support the learner's effort in areas needing growth. Grades are no more than symbols. They don't really help the learner know what he or she is doing well, as narratives do, and they don't give the evaluator a chance to describe what needs to improve. Narratives take more time and energy on the part of the teacher, but they are far more insightful and actually more accurate than grades.

You are on the right track but must take it a little farther in light of the fact that kids blossom at different times. To make it successful, the system of failure must be over hauled. In life we learn from failure, in school we fail from failure. Failure must become a positive learning experience. This means, if you fail, you go back immediately of in very near future, learn from your mistakes and move forward.

Of course now the dominoes begin to fall. After restructurin the system of failure, we must realize it is ok for students to progress at different rates be they faster or slower.

We make this more clear in our books at www.WholeChildReform.com . The "Quashing" book has a sub chapter entitled "The Absurdity of Grades"

Cap Lee

I am a big fan of pass/fail. I think of it this way, in some cases: if you jump out of an airplane, the chute packer is graded on a pass/fail basis, yes? Which would you prefer?

It is important to note that if the parachute does fail, there is a back-up chute, and then when the jumper gets on the ground, they are trained all over again. So there is tremendous value in the concept that if a student fails, they will have time and support to remedy the mistake.

www.honeyfern.org

Because my students are in special education I do not give grades or even pass fail. Each student is working to his or her own goals and bench marks as stated in their IEP's. When I assess the students I record the percentage of accuracy and independence they exhibited in the assessment.I then know what they got correct and how much support they required to get there.

I have an interesting analogy which speaks to the value of descriptive feedback, rather than wholly relying on pass/fail as the only options.

My wife is apprenticing to become a potter. She is learning with her mentor, who has been doing pottery for nearly 40 years. They just recently put a bunch of their pottery in the kiln to be glazed, which a bit of a nerve racking thing to do, because they have spent many hours of work on their pottery, and glazing pottery (producing those nice shiny colors) is a bit of an uncertain art.

The last load they put in the kiln got over-heated, which meant that some of the glazes melted more than they should have, and actually dripped a bit. In some cases this produced fantastic colors, in others it glued otherwise wonderful pottery to the kiln shelves. Much of the pottery is salvageable, but some of it has been ruined forever by the glazing process.

In a pass/fail system, this would be considered a fail, since the amount of effort it takes to make that pottery does not justify 80% of your kiln load working, and 20% of it not working. However, as they unloaded the kiln, my wife learned about the different glazes, and saw her work in action. She learned about better ways to load the kiln for next time, and will likely do a better job next time. The pass/fail system for her wouldn't work, because she wouldn't get the feedback she needs to improve.

I agree Cap that our system is designed to share examples of success, but we need to share more examples of failure, and continuing effort to improve, rather than a 1 size fits all model.

Why, for example, if a student doesn't do well on a unit assessment do we move on? Is finishing the next unit's material in a timely fashion so important that we forget that we should be concerned about what students are learning?